Lulu, the new collaboration between Lou Reed and Metallica, opens with a sparsely strummed acoustic guitar, Reed’s distinct voice, and a question: Can this misaligned collaboration surprise you with unexpected merit? Once James Hetfield enters with his amplified chin-rock croon over a wall of guitars turned up to eleven, and once Reed sings the charming lyric, “I would cut my legs and tits off when I think of Boris Karloff,” you have your answer. No. No it cannot.

This album is exactly what you’d expect from the head-on collision between a rusty metal machine and an art-rock poet elder, each seeking relevance in all the wrong places…If Lulu is all just an inside joke, it’s hilarious. But if not, it’s one of the oddest collaborations in memory, recent or otherwise, and quite a misfire. Though if Leonard Cohen and Mastodon put out a release, I will be all ears.

The setting at the Copley Symphony Hall is not unlike Leonard Cohen himself. With its stained-glass windows and walls of intricately sculpted marble, the building seems as though it should house sermons rather than symphonies. But at the center of the basilican architecture lies the stage itself, lit in smokey reds and swanky purples that [seem to belong more] in a brothel than a cathedral. The juxtaposition of the sacred and the profane has long been a tenet of Cohen’s distinguished career, which has been defined as much by prayer songs like “If It Be Your Will” as by the lurid recounting of trysts with Janis Joplin… Providing a sharp contrast to the often pitch-black poetry of his lyrics, Cohen grinned and joked around with the crowd. “The last time I was on this stage was fourteen or fifteen years ago,” he deadpanned. “I was sixty then, just a kid with a crazy dream.”

Post Title: Poetic Memory: A Scribe Amidst the Lions (List)

Post Date: Tuesday, June 28th, 2011, by Chris Maroulakos

Kris Towne (vocals, guitar) [on his influences]: Modest Mouse — The Moon and Antarctica: I was too young (and too far away) for the live show heyday of Modest Mouse. I’d like to believe in that basement-show magic people talk about, but I never got to experience it. What I got was an introduction to MM with the album The Moon and Antarctica… It had already been heralded by the indie world — and, for the first time, parts of the mainstream world — as cool. And I loved it! That was followed by obsession over the record… followed by a general disappointment in pretty much everything the band has done since. Which is what happens when you obsess over one record from a great band. I caught them on their bridge between the indie world and the mainstream, and loved every minute of it. It was a point in their career and music where everything came together in a magical way; big ideas, big studio, HUGE label and distribution, all for the very first time in their career. Those combinations will probably never happen again for a band to create the same kind of sound.

Post Title: Drew Andrews Celebrates His Birthday

Post Date: Sunday, January 10th, 2010, by Chris Maroulakos

Following the theft of his musical equipment during a 2005 tour with Via Satellite, Andrews returned to San Diego and began to write music on the only instrument he had left: an acoustic guitar. Though initially a departure for the electonically-inclined artist, those tender, fingerpicked songs eventually became the gorgeous 2008 album Only Mirrors, and so was born Drew Andrews’ solo career.

Section Title: Live Wilco Archive

This archive was created by members of Wilco’s ViaChicago fan community to make the band’s live shows more accessible to fans. All content below has been posted in good faith, in accordance with the band’s policy: “Wilco supports the free trading of live recordings for non-commercial purposes.”